Media Alert
RICHMOND, CA (February 6, 2007) – Continuing its goal of supporting the world’s best adventurers in their endeavors to push their limits and explore the far corners of the globe, Mountain Hardwear recently announced the addition of three new world-renowned mountaineers to its already stellar line-up of sponsored athletes.
Robert and Daniela Jasper
Where do we start with new Mountain Hardwear athletes Robert, 38, and Daniela, 35, Jasper? The German climbers are two of the leading alpinists in the world, and together comprise one of the most dynamic climbing teams in history.
Both made their mark early. Robert first attempted the Eiger North Face at age 17 (he has since climbed it 13 times) and soloed more than 100 difficult routes in the Alps by his early 20s. He hit the climbing limelight in 1991 by bagging first solo ascents of the Alps’ three biggest north faces—the Eiger, Matterhorn and Grandes Jorasses—in record time. In 2003, after the first free ascent of 1,100-meter “No Siesta,” considered the hardest mixed route in the Alps, he was nominated as the world’s most successful mixed climber by Germany’s Klettern Magazin. Today his passion for climbing takes him all over the world, from Patagonia--where he recently made the fastest ascent of Cerro Torre--to the Himalayas, India and Alaska, where he climbed two routes on Denali in just four days. With a teaching degree in sports, the certified Mountain Guide trainer was recently nominated for France’s prestigious Piolet d`Or award (French for The Golden Ice Axe), an annual mountaineering accolade bestowed jointly since 1991 by French climbing magazine Montagnes and the Groupe de Haute Montagne. He has also been a guest on talk shows throughout the world, with his adventures documented on television.
Wife Daniela met Robert while climbing when she was 22 and has since become one of the leading female alpinists in Europe. She has more Alps ascents than any other woman, many of them firsts, including three different routes up the Eiger North Face as well as a first ascent with Robert up the Symphonie de Liberté, considered the hardest north face alpine route ever climbed. Other mixed-climb milestones include Mt. Blanc du Tacul’s Vol de Nuit and Betablock Super, one of the world’s most challenging ice routes. Also a teacher, she works with mentally challenged children and is a western horse trainer when not traipsing the globe with her husband.
They live in the Swiss Alps close to the Eiger with their two young children, Amelie and Stefan, and will be featured in this spring’s MacGillivray Freeman IMAX® film, The Alps: Giants of Nature. They are also writing a book about their adventures, with a special focus on the Eiger North Face.
Ueli Steck
It takes a lot to climb to the top rung of the mountaineering ladder. Mountain Hardwear athlete Ueli Steck, 30, of Switzerland has done that and more in the past few years to emerge as one of the best alpinists in the world.
Though he has climbed throughout the Alps since he was young, he first hit the scene in 2001 by putting a new route up the Eiger North Face called The Young Spider with teammate Stephan Siegrist. He followed that the next year with a heroic winter ascent of the East Face of Mt. Dickey in the Alaska Range, calling his route Blood from the Stone. In 2004, again with Siegrist, he tackled the north faces of three Alps classics in seccession--the Eiger, Monch and Jungfrau—in just 25 hours. A year later he made even more headlines with his solo, no ropes ascent of Excalibur, rated a 6b on a difficult and exposed 350-meter wall on the Wendenstöcke. He kept his Herculean pace going the same year with his "Khumbu-Express" expedition in Nepal's Everest region, resulting in the first solos of the Cholatse's north face (6,440 meters) and Tawoche's east face (6,505 meters).
After all that, you’d think he might give his crampons a break. But last year, he again pushed the mountaineering world to new heights with a first ascent of 7,772-meter Gasherbrum II; an epic third solo ascent of the Matterhorn from the Hornli Hut to the summit in a record 25 hours; and a first solo of the Eiger North Face’s The Young Spider, the first repetition of the route he put up with Siegrist in 2001. “The whole thing was just a question of willpower,“ he says of the 1,800-meter mixed rock and ice route.
This January he mixed alpinism with altruism, leading a group of young Swiss climbers, 12 boys and girls between 18 and 22 years old, to Patagonia in an expedition sponsored by the Swiss Alpine Club.
For more information on Mountain Hardwear athletes please visit: www.mountainhardwear.com/AthletesEvents.aspx